Energy

“If one advance could transform America's prospects, it would be ready access, at scale, to a range of affordable, renewable, low-carbon energy technologies. Only one path will lead to such transformative technologies: research.”                                                                                       - Susan Hockfield

August 21, 2019

A novel system developed by MIT researchers automatically “learns” how to schedule data-processing operations across thousands of servers — a task traditionally reserved for imprecise, human-...

August 18, 2019

Stock market investors often rely on financial risk theories that help them maximize returns while minimizing financial loss due to market fluctuations. These theories help investors maintain a...

July 29, 2019

Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants is widely considered an essential component of any climate change mitigation plan. Many research efforts focus on developing and...

July 24, 2019

Years before he set foot on the MIT campus, Kieran P. Dolan participated in studies conducted at MIT's Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (NRL). As an undergraduate student majoring in nuclear engineering...

July 11, 2019

Researchers at MIT have come up with a new pulsed laser deposition technique to make thinner lithium electrolytes using less heat, promising faster charging and potentially higher-voltage solid-...

July 08, 2019

Fulfilling the ultimate goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change — keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, if not 1.5 C — will be impossible without dramatic action from the...

July 03, 2019

Omer Tanovic, a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, joined the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) because he loves studying theory...

July 03, 2019

In any conventional silicon-based solar cell, there is an absolute limit on overall efficiency, based partly on the fact that each photon of light can only knock loose a single electron, even if...

June 26, 2019

Catherine Drennan says nothing in her job thrills her more than the process of discovery. But Drennan, a professor of biology and chemistry, is not referring to her landmark research on protein...

June 25, 2019

Greentown Labs is the largest clean technology incubator in North America, a fact that’s easy to accept when you walk inside. The massive, open entrance of Greentown’s Somerville, Massachusetts,...

June 05, 2019

A broad class of materials called perovskites is considered one of the most promising avenues for developing new, more efficient solar cells. But the virtually limitless number of possible...

June 05, 2019

The cloud’s very name reflects how many people think of this data storage system: intangible, distant, and disentangled from day-to-day life. But MIT PhD student Steven Gonzalez is reframing the...

June 05, 2019

MIT researchers have developed a novel “photonic” chip that uses light instead of electricity — and consumes relatively little power in the process. The chip could be used to process massive...

May 27, 2019

Researchers at MIT have collaborated with a team of scientists from the University of British Columbia, the University of Maryland, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Google to conduct...

May 17, 2019

Trying to duplicate the power of the sun for energy production on earth has challenged fusion researchers for decades. One path to endless carbon-free energy has focused on heating and confining...

May 17, 2019

The winner of Wednesday’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition was a startup helping oil well owners remotely monitor and control the pumping of their wells, increasing production while reducing...

May 13, 2019

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the MIT Materials Research Laboratory hosted 26 high school girls from the greater Boston area last month for lunch and a science-...

May 13, 2019

Cloudy beige liquid swirls inside a large bioreactor resembling a French press as Jenna Ahn examines small flasks nearby. The lab where Ahn is working, in the subbasement of Building 66, has the...

May 03, 2019

India has made great strides in electrification in recent years, but further investment is still needed, especially in rural areas. Here, Robert Stoner, deputy director of the MIT Energy...

May 02, 2019

One of the most fundamental chemical reactions that takes place in energy-conversion systems — including catalysts, flow batteries, high-capacity energy-storing supercapacitors, and systems to...

May 01, 2019

The following announcement was released jointly by MIT and the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Successful global efforts to substantially limit greenhouse gas...

May 01, 2019

MIT’s Plan for Action on Climate Change, released by President L. Rafael Reif in October 2015, has already begun...

April 24, 2019

In late March, 29 MIT graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduates traveled to Washington to speak with members of Congress about the need for continued federal investment of science and...

April 22, 2019

The following letter was sent to the MIT community on April 23 by President L. Rafael Reif

To the members of the MIT community,

Starting next fall and ending on the 50th...

April 22, 2019

Engineers must manage a maelstrom in the core of operating nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactions deposit an extraordinary amount of heat in the fuel rods, setting off a frenzy of boiling, bubbling,...

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